US official: People of Haiti deserve to be treated with ‘dignity’

A senior American official has apologized for how the United States has treated Haitian migrants, describing it as an “injustice.”

During a visit to Haiti on Friday, Juan Gonzalez, who is the director for the Western Hemisphere for the US National Security Council, said that the people of Haiti deserved to be treated with “dignity,” The Associated Press reported.

“I want to say that it was an injustice, that it was wrong,” Gonzalez said. “The proud people of Haiti and any migrant deserve to be treated with dignity.”

Gonzalez and US assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols are on a two-day official visit to Haiti, according to the AP.

Images appeared of riders on horseback rounding up Haitian migrants and using their reins in an aggressive manner. The brutal treatment of the migrants by the border agents drew a swell of criticism toward the Biden administration’s handling of the issue.

Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters has said the US treatment of Haitian migrants in Del Rio, Texas is worse than slavery.

Waters (D-Calif.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, “What we witnessed takes us back hundreds of years. What we witnessed was worse than what we witnessed in slavery.”

The influential California Democrat added, “Cowboys with their reins in hand whipping Black people, Haitians, into the water where they’re scrambling and falling down and all they’re trying to do is escape the violence in their country.”

“I wanna know in the first place who’s paying these cowboys to do this work. They’ve got to be gotten rid of,” the chair of the House Committee on Financial Services added. “They’re trying to take us back to slavery days, and worse than that.”

The new surge of migrants in the southern border represents yet another test of Biden’s widely-criticized immigration policy.

Biden had repeatedly promised on the campaign trail to overturn the harshest aspects of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration agenda.

The scene of dense crowds, sleeping on dirt in scorching heat and with little access to food and clear water, drew condemnations from local officials.